The Moto X looks gorgeous and is still a powerful device that is very well worth its retail price.

It might be a year late but the Moto X from Motorola can still turn heads and with its imminent release in the country this week, I’m pretty sure fans will still be happy to say hello to Moto.

Launched in 2014, the Moto X competes with the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S5, HTC One M8 and LG G3. It sports the latest Snapdragon 801 processor, which was among the best back then.

The handset is among the nicest looking devices and with the availability of the Moto Maker in the US, customers can actually select the colors and materials for a custom order. This made it possible to have that iconic bamboo wood back cover with white trimming to be made available to US customers.

The front panel is completely covered with Gorilla Glass 3 from edge to edge with the corners slightly curved towards the sides. The top and bottom ends are almost symmetrical with a textured metal strip that cuts around the middle. Motorola has maintained that elegant and premium feel in all its handsets and the Moto X is a testament to that.

However, the model that will be released here in the Philippines will only be the black polycarbonate version. This variant comes with a non-removable soft matte back cover with chrome metallic trimmings. The handset is shaped in a slightly curved way to give it a better and more comfortable grip on the hand, much like the way LG did with the G3 and G4.

Performance of the Moto X is still at par with last year’s flagship devices and even with most of this year’s top phones. This is due to the smaller footprint of the OS and the Vanilla UI that is devoid of any skinning and customizations. The combo between the Snapdragon 801 and 2GB of RAM is more than enough to give the device the needed boost when put to the task.

As such, benchmark results are quite high even at current standards. Performance is pretty good as the handset runs on a Snapdragon 801 quadcore processor with each core clocking in at 2.5GHz. The handset scored 4,844 on PCMark and 46,096 on Antutu benchmark – both pretty high even on current charts. The UI is snappy and responsive, apps load fast and switching between windows and tasks is smooth.

Camera performance is good as long as there is ample light. However, it degrades pretty fast under low-light conditions and becomes very grainy when there’s very little ambient light. Video recording is clear and crisp although one problem would be storage of media files since the non-expandable internal storage is limited to a maximum of 11GB usable space. What I really like is the LED ring flash which is unique and a first in any smartphone I’ve seen before.

One concern with the Moto X is the rather low battery capacity. At 2,300mAh, the device barely lasts the whole day. Using the usual battery test, I only managed to get around 7.5 hours of continuous video playback at 50 percent brightness and 0% volume. PCMark Battery Test gave it a score of six hours, two minutes. That’s exactly the same results I got from the OPPO N3 but that one has a 3,000mAh battery so the Moto X is still more efficient.

With a suggested retail price of P16,999, the Moto X is still within the price range of last year’s contemporaries. It should be available in local stores any day this week.

The Moto X looks gorgeous and is still a powerful device that is very well worth its retail price.

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